I
submit to painful and disagreeable things, to make me brave in the
great battle which I have to fight against sin, and ignorance, and
heathendom." "Therefore," he says, in another place, "I take
pleasure in afflictions, in persecutions, in necessities, in
distresses;" and that not because those things were pleasant, they
were just as unpleasant to him as to anyone else; but because they
taught him to bear, taught him to be brave; taught him, in short, to
become a perfect man of God.
This is St. Paul's account of his own training: in the Epistle for
to-day we have another account of it; a description of the life which
he led, and which he was content to lead--"in much suffering, in
stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watching, in
fastings"--and an account, too, of the temper which he had learnt to
show amid such a life of vexation, and suffering, and shame, and
danger--"approving himself in all things the minister of God, by
pureness, by wisdom, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the spirit of
holiness, by love unfeigned;" "as dying, and behold we live; as
chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as
poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all
things.
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